More than 1,000 grassroots activists have begun a 2,400km overland journey across North Africa to Gaza to demand an end to Israel’s war and deliver humanitarian aid to the besieged enclave.
The 112-vehicle convoy, which left Tunis on Monday, is expected to swell as it travels through Libya and Egypt.
Participants say they have been forced to act as their governments have failed to end the 20-month war between Israel and Hamas.
Organisers said the convoy was not bringing aid into Gaza, but rather aimed at carrying out a “symbolic act” by breaking the blockade on the territory.
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“This is a message to the people of Gaza: You are not alone,” said Sheikh Yahya Sari of the Algerian Association of Muslim Scholars. “We share your pain, and this is a form of public pressure against the occupier in the face of international failure to stop the massacres.”
Doctors, lawyers, journalists, diplomats, trade unionists and politicians from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania have signed up for the Maghreb Caravan of Steadfastness, which has been organised by the non-profit Co-ordination for Joint Action for Palestine in Tunisia group and several other civil rights organisations.
The convoy is being seen as historic in the Maghreb, the western part of the Arab world, which has largely distanced itself from events in Palestine.
Morocco normalised relations with Israel in 2000, along with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in the Mashreq, the eastern Arab world.
“This initiative is aimed [at] all free people of the world to stand against occupation and genocide,” convoy spokesman Wael Naouar told the Tunisian news agency.
“Breaking the blockade is not just about delivering aid. It’s also about evacuating the wounded so they can receive medical treatment outside the occupied territories.”
The organisers said the convoy’s launch “comes at a time when UN reports indicate the people of Gaza are facing the worst humanitarian disaster in modern times [as] 100 per cent of the Strip’s population is food insecure, while more than half of Gaza’s population is now homeless after their homes were destroyed.”
The caravan will pause in Cairo on Thursday to join forces with the Global March to Gaza, which is being staged by activists from 32 countries, before travelling on Friday to the town of Arish in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
From there, participants will walk the remaining 50km, arriving on Sunday in Rafah, the city straddling the border between Egypt and Gaza.
There, diplomats and rights activists are expected to try to negotiate access to Gaza.
Conditions in Gaza have worsened dramatically since the Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023.
Israel recently barred the entry of humanitarian aid into the territory for 80 days, bringing the population to the brink of famine, according to international aid organisations. It has since supported an aid delivery system that has been marred by violence and shunned by humanitarian groups.
